An adult cook's hands holding a ceramic pudding basin just turned out onto a plate, the domed pudding intact, steam rising, dark kitchen background

One basin · 1.2 litres · 8 servings

A Christmas pudding is 570g of fruit, 110g of flour and eight hours you have to be in the house for

Everything on this site is written the way you would write it on a card: what to buy, what it weighs, and how long it sits over the water.

Read the recipe

570g: dried vine fruit, soaked overnight
110g: beef suet, shredded
110g: plain flour, and no more
110g: fresh white breadcrumbs
110g: dark muscovado, plus a spoon of treacle
8 hrs: steaming, on the day it is made
2 hrs: steaming again, on Christmas Day

The turn-out is where the buttering gets judged: a thinly greased basin tears the dome.Photo: Yasin Onuş / Pexels

Stir-up Sunday is the last Sunday before Advent. It takes its name from the collect that begins Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, and it is the day the mixture gets made — not the day the pudding gets eaten.

The one to make this week

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Individual moulds give a better crust-to-centre ratio than a single dish — and the dates go in as a purée, not whole.

Three that are finished in an afternoon, and one that decides the crumb

Golden brioche bun filled with ice cream, branded with a small paper label, on a plate

Recipe

Treacle Sponge, Steamed the Long Way

Golden syrup sets the base; a butter sponge sits above it. Two hours of steam is what separates a proper treacle sponge from a warm cake.

Puddings

Hands shaping a ball of dough on a flour-dusted wooden board

Ingredient

Shredded Suet, Against Butter

The fat in a steamed pudding is not a background note. It determines what the crumb does.

The Larder

Pouring cream from a jug into a stand mixer's glass bowl

Technique

Custard That Will Not Split

Poured custard is six egg yolks, 600 ml of milk or cream, and the ability to stop at 82 °C.

Sauces

The larder, by weight

All of The Larder

Bars are drawn against the 570g of fruit, the heaviest thing in the basin.
In the recipe	What it is	What it does
Weighed dry, in grams
570g	Dried vine fruit	Sugar, bulk and the whole of the colour once it has taken up spirit
110g	Beef suet, shredded	Melts later than butter, so the crumb sets open rather than tight
110g	Plain flour	Sifted with the mixed spice, cinnamon and cloves — and no more than this
110g	Fresh white breadcrumbs	Structure rather than filler: a lighter crumb than flour alone would set
110g	Dark muscovado	Damp, molasses-heavy, and the reason the finished pudding is nearly black
Measured by spoon and by egg
1 tbsp	Black treacle	Bitterness against all that sugar. One spoon; two is too many
3 large	Eggs	Beaten with the treacle before they go near the dry ingredients
Poured, and the thing it all goes into
75ml	Dark rum, with 75ml stout	Loosens the batter on mixing day, then preserves the pudding for eight weeks
1.2 L	The basin	A rim the string can bite on, and thick enough to take eight hours of boiling